From my recent Yelp! review of the Apple Store @ Lenox Square:
Will the persons who believe Apple can roll out their products properly please raise your hands?
Thought so. No hands. My last review of this place remains the same: why don't we dial down the smug, the pretty, and the fanciful-whimsy, and amp up the speed and common sense we use to help customers? I'm thankful for the Genius Bar, and while I was here I was able to talk to an expert and solve an issue a friend was having with his MacBook. I appreciate having that chance, believe me I do. But overall, the very environment that made Apple what it is today, its retail spaces, is now its most mind-numbing albatross. The stores have become the in-person, big-for-their-britches experience that I can no longer tolerate. I can really only speak to the Lenox Square location, but really people - move your customers through with better pace and stop trying to be iTiffany. Putting people on these vague, long iPad waiting lists that don't go anywhere just irritates, frustrates and causes your fans to act out with rage, rabid frothing and poor manners. The folks in front of me today shopping for iPads were about ready to have a meltdown - and I with them. I got so frustrated after being on a waiting list for a 1/2 hour that I walked out - and, totally unwittingly, mind you - with a five-user, family-pack of Snow Leopard. Without paying. Oh ethereal-white Apple Store (“futuristic Swedish hospitals,” according to Jon Stewart): you turn people into shoplifters with your fancy design and tantalizing products! Does it have to be so? To review: I got a package of the newest, snoozer Mac OS version and not the finger-sliding slice of goodness I came for. (The software will be returned, FYI.) No product, all frustration, and a sour taste in my mouth. Like Jon Stewart, I have been a Mac Head since the Apple IIe, and I swear, I'm just so sick and tired of the attitude. We get it, your products are cool. You have consistently won the "gorgeous OS war" with Microsoft and even survived the dark days of OS9.
But please - give it a rest already. When you come up with a stunner of a product like the iPad, be ready for the response. Be ready for the customer clamor. You've had, like, six different trial runs before this product even made it to the drawing board, so dismount the ivory tower and help us buy your fucking products. Oh and watch for a package from me in the next few days. I might even slip this review in for good measure. # # #
UPDATE: Not that I feel vindicated, but “Appholes” is pretty app-ropos.